Keigo Higashino, 68, the leading writer of Japanese mysteries, passed away from colon cancer, on Thursday. He won awards for The Devotion of Suspect X and other books in the Detective Galileo series.
Mystery writer Keigo Higashino, who dominated the genre with such works as “Yogisha X no Kenshin” (“The Devotion of Suspect X”), died of colon cancer on Thursday. He was 68.
Originally from Osaka City, Higashino won the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1985 for his novel “Hokago” (After school), which marked his professional debut. This was followed by numerous works, including “Himitsu” (“Naoko”) and “Byakuyako” (“Journey Under the Midnight Sun”), establishing Higashino as a leading figure in Japan’s mystery boom from the 1990s.
He won the Naoki Prize for “The Devotion of Suspect X” in 2006. Many of Higashino’s works have been adapted into films and TV dramas, including the “Galileo” (“Detective Galileo”) mystery series featuring a physicist as the protagonist.
His books have been widely translated in China, South Korea and elsewhere.
Higashino won the Chuokoron literary prize for “Namiya Zakkaten no Kiseki” (“The Miracles of the Namiya General Store”), the Shibata Renzaburo prize for “Mugenka” and the Yoshikawa Eiji literary prize for “Inori no Maku ga Oriru Toki” (“The Final Curtain”).
More than 100 million copies of his books have been printed in Japan. He won the Kikuchi Kan prize in 2023 and the Mystery Writers of Japan Awards in 2025.
